


One thing that never happened to Joshua Scott Chasez

by Molly



Category: NSYNC
Genre: M/M, Popslash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-18
Updated: 2008-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In which Chris breaks up with JC, and wackiness ensues.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	One thing that never happened to Joshua Scott Chasez

"I've been thinking." Chris led JC over to his couch and sat him down on it. JC loved his couch, with all the little nubby things that rubbed against his legs when he sat on it. He had good feelings about his couch, but the look on Chris's face wasn't a good feelings kind of look.

"Maybe I should sit on the ... coffee table." That seemed safe enough. If this was going to be a bad associations talk, he could always throw it out. He'd never really liked it anyway.

"Sit," Chris said, frowning. "Stay."

JC stayed, but he fidgeted.

"The thing is, I don't think this thing between us is going to work out." JC opened his mouth, but Chris held up a hand quickly and JC didn't actually want to talk to it. "Just listen. You and me, we're totally different. I'm beer and pizza, you're wine and roses."

"I don't actually eat the roses."

"What?"

"The analogy, the drinking and the --"

"C." Chris took a deep breath. "Shut up."

JC glared.

"As I was saying. You're wine and roses. And candlelight and shit. And I'm not any of those things. You're tall and sorta skanky, I'm short and devilishly handsome. I'm from Pennsylvania, you're from...Disneyland."

"Hey! I am not _skanky_." JC glared, and reached up to carefully finger a curl. "And anyway, I could get a haircut."

Chris just looked at him.

"I could shave!"

"No, no, you can't change my mind." Chris patted JC on the shoulder. Then he tilted his head to one side, rolled his eyes, and hugged JC tight. He pulled back quickly, still patting. "I'm sorry. This is just how it has to be. Don't cry or anything, really." He handed JC a handkerchief. "I'm not worth it."

JC stared at the handkerchief, in absolutely no danger of crying. Then he stared at Chris. "Are you. Um. Are you..."

Chris brushed a tear out of the corner of one eye, and looked brave. "It hurts me as much as it hurts you, babe. Be strong. Go see Joey, I told him to take care of you."

JC looked carefully around his living room. He looked at Chris carefully, too. Slowly, he pocketed the handkerchief. "Why don't I do that. Like, right _now_."

  
   


* * *

  
   


"...and then he left!" JC waved the handkerchief Chris had given him madly in front of Joey's face. "Just like that! Man, I don't believe it."

"He just dumped you? In your living room?" Joey blinked. "Where were you sitting?"

"The new couch."

"Awww, man." Joey patted JC's shoulder awkwardly. "That's really harsh."

"Exactly!" JC nodded fiercely. "I thought about moving to the coffee table, but that would have looked kind of weird. Don't you think that would have been kind of weird?"

"How long were you guys together?"

JC hit Joey on the arm, hard. "Dude, we weren't. That's what I'm trying to tell you! We never hooked up! He's on drugs or something."

"Wait. Wait." Joey scratched his head. "He broke up with you from a relationship you didn't even have?"

"Joe, I know I can be a little spaced out sometimes, but I swear on -- on Superman's _life_, dawg, I swear -- that I would not space a whole relationship with Chris. You would not space me having a relationship with Chris. Justin and Lance would not --"

"Okay, okay." Joey patted JC's shoulder again in what he probably thought was a comforting way. "I believe you. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do about it."

"Well, _he_ said you were supposed to take care of me. Like, in his absence."

"Was he doing anything...care-y...before?"

"He tucked me into bed once. But that was in 1997, and I was very. Very. Drunk."

"Well, okay." Joey shrugged helplessly. "But it doesn't seem like he's leaving much of a void."

  
   


* * *

  
   


Chris didn't do anything else weird the next day at Johnny's and JC figured whatever the joke was, it was over. They did some singing and they ran through some routines and then it was time for dinner. Joey ate what was put in front of him, Chris and Lance had stuff brought in from Taco Bell, and JC and Justin made sandwiches in the kitchen.

JC felt a little safer after Justin tried to steal his thin, perfect tomato slices and ended up wearing them on his head. While pale pink juice slid down Justin's cheek, JC cleared his throat and said, "Hey, you, um, you notice anything weird lately about Chris?"

Justin pulled the tomatoes out of his hair and threw them into the trash. He wiped his face clean with the hem of his t-shirt and avoided JC's eyes. "No."

JC nodded. "Yeah, maybe I'm just wired." He shook his head. "I dunno, man, I'm a little bit freaked out."

Justin looked at JC sideways, a blank and not very friendly look. "Don't put me in the middle of this, C. This is between you and Chris."

JC blinked. "But-- I mean, what... No. What?"

"Look." Justin sliced through his sandwich with one clean sweep of a very large, very sharp knife. JC took a step back. "Look. Chris is like, he's all vulnerable right now, and he needs me to be on his side. And honestly, dude, if what he said is true then I really am on his side. I don't want to get into it with you, is all I'm sayin'. We're friends, we're good, and whatever's going on with you guys, I still love you both."

"What -- what exactly did Chris say?"

Justin looked JC up and down, eyes narrow. "Mandy."

"What about her?"

"Did you guys...?"

"No!" JC glared. "No, I didn't -- well. We just, no. We did some stuff, but it wasn't like that, we were just buddies. We fooled around a little. It wasn't a thing, it wasn't anything."

Justin sighed. He put the knife down, which made JC feel better, but then he looked at JC like he was a bug, which made him feel a whole lot worse. "So you admit it. Fuck, that's cold. And you're acting all surprised that Chris is being kinda weird? That's what happens, C, when you fuck around on your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend! We were never a thing, we're just friends!"

"Right." Justin shook his head. "Chris wasn't a thing, Mandy wasn't a thing...you've got some pretty fucked up priorities, C." He turned and stormed out of the kitchen.

He took JC's sandwich with him.

  
   


* * *

  
   


The next day, JC climbed onto the three-man bus and found Chris sobbing in Justin's arms. Spread out on the coffee table in front of them were all the pictures from all their photo shoots that had ever shown JC and Chris standing together. Or sitting together. Or touching. Or looking at each other. Or even, really, looking in each other's general direction; for one of those shots, JC remembered looking guiltily and lustfully at Justin. More lustfully than guiltily, really. For JC, the guilt usually came later.

Justin grabbed a packed duffle bag from beside the coffee table and hurled it at JC's head.

That was the day JC moved to the two-man bus.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"What is he doing here?" Lance demanded, glaring green laser beams of death at Joey.

"Well," Joey said. "See--"

"Do you know what he did to Chris? Did he tell you? Because Chris has been sitting on my bunk crying every night for two weeks and I'm not having the guy who did that under my roof."

"Did Chris tell you that we never actually --"

Lance turned on JC and stabbed a finger at him. "You shut up. People who want to live," he said in a low, growly voice, "do not make Chris Kirkpatrick cry when I'm around to hear about it."

JC felt sort of like crying himself.

"Joey, bathroom," Lance snapped, and Joey raised his eyebrows at JC in apology and followed Lance in.

"Lance--" JC whined, but Lance cut him off.

"JC, don't even try. You just sit there and think about what you've done."

Miserable and alone, JC sat and thought.

  
   


* * *

  
   


Ten minutes later, Lance moved off the two-man bus.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"I don't get it," JC said for the third time, sniffling into a mug of mint Echinacea tea. "I thought Lance liked me."

"Lance loves you," Joey insisted. "He's just kind of upset right now because you broke Chris's heart."

"But I didn't!"

"He thinks you did. And Lance, you know, he's very. I mean, he sort of."

"He wants to get in Chris's pants."

"He loves Chris, and can't stand to see him hurt. It's a hero-worship thing. But he still loves you, too, C, I know it."

"How do you know it?"

"Before he left, he told me to stay here and be on your side."

JC stared at Joey in disbelief. "You're only here under _orders_?"

Blushing, Joey looked away and turned his own mug around in his hands several times. "Well, I would have stayed anyway."

"Of course you'd say that, you're my designated comforter!" JC pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and groaned. "I have a _designated comforter_."

"Look on the bright side," Joey said cheerfully. "At least you know they care."

  
   


* * *

  
   


For three days, nobody spoke to JC except Joey. JC clung to Joey like a leech, wary of letting him near any of the other guys. He wasn't sure what was happening to them. Possibly Chris had developed mind control powers, or possibly he was slipping something into their food. Either way, JC didn't want Joey anywhere near the danger zone.

It helped that Joey was a really good designated comforter. His heart really seemed to be in it. At night, when they were done singing -- when Chris's tear-strained voice belting out _Bye Bye Bye_ no longer screeched through JC's earpiece like a love-lorn banshee in search of retribution -- Joey would sit by JC in his bunk on the two-man bus, a bunk that smelled of Lance and home and also just a little bit of ferret, and stroke his hair and tell him everything would be all right.

JC started noticing things about Joey that he'd never really noticed before. Joey knew every kind of tea that JC liked, and always knew which one was right for which time of day. His hands were big and always warm, and sometimes when Joey smiled his mouth made a perfect triangle. It was so dorky that JC tried to make it happen whenever he could. Dorky was a very good look on Joey, which -- Joey being Joey and all -- was probably a very good thing for the band.

Joey's eyes were brown. Not like Chris's eyes, which were so dark they were almost black and which kind of blazed out from under eyebrows that JC had always secretly thought were sort of scary. Joey's eyes were warm brown, like chocolate, with gold in them. When he looked at JC, his eyes were always soft and welcoming, kind of gentle and sweet and caring. That was why JC could make fun of Joey whenever he wanted, even though he couldn't always do that with the other guys. No matter how much fun JC made of Joey, the look in Joey's eyes never changed.

The other thing JC noticed -- which he'd kind of known already, but it felt like he was knowing it for the first time all at once -- was that Joey liked a lot of the same things JC did. He liked laughing, and his laugh made JC laugh, and that made JC feel like Joey was hugging him even from across the room. He liked sitting inside and looking out the window in snowy cold places, and he liked getting outside and playing in the water in warm beach places. He liked going to the clubs, though he didn't so much like hooking up in them, but that was okay; lately, JC wasn't really all about the hooking up himself.

Joey liked JC. That was the most important thing JC noticed. And that was really good, because with the rest of the band not speaking to him, JC really needed to be liked. Joey liked people like it was his secret super power, so they felt it all the way down to their toes.

Even when he was at his most miserable, JC still felt pretty good when Joey was around.

  
   


* * *

  
   


One night, a hotel night instead of a bus night, JC cornered Chris at the ice machine at 2 a.m.

"We have to talk, man," he said calmly, looming just a little bit.

Chris clutched at his heart. "Jesus, C, you scared the fuck out of me!"

"I needed to see you!"

"So you staked out the freakin' ice machine? How long have you been lurking around here? Somebody's gonna try to sell you some drugs, man."

JC pulled a baggie filled with green out of his back pocket and waved it in Chris's face. "Already done, dawg."

"Christ." Chris swiped the bag away and stuffed it into a nearby trashcan. "Don't buy crap from people you don't know."

"Dude, I bought it off Nick Carter."

"That's even worse. That's just what our fans want to read about in _Teen Beat_. I am the only person in this band who actually thinks, except for Lance, and Lance just doesn't give a fuck."

"Lance loves me," JC said stoutly. "Joey said so."

"Yes, well, Lance is living on _my_ bus now, so I think I would know who he loves better than the likes of you. Now, what did you want to talk about?"

JC folded his arms across his chest and tried to loom a little harder. "Why are you fucking with me?"

Chris folded his arms and loomed back. At something like four feet tall, Chris loomed a hell of a lot better than JC ever would. "Because I can."

JC blinked. "But -- hey!"

Chris grinned. "And because you broke my heart, dude. You trampled right over my tender, fragile feelings."

"I did not!"

"I cry myself to sleep every night over your heartless betrayal." Chris waved his ice bucket lazily in JC's face. "Now, move. Lance's rum and coke will not ice itself."

Numbly, JC moved. He watched as Chris filled the ice bucket and strode off down the hall. When he could find his voice, JC shouted, "Fuck you, Chris! _You_ broke up with _me_!"

"On the advice of my therapist!" Chris shouted back cheerfully, and vanished around the corner.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"He's fucking with me," JC snuffled into Joey's chest.

"Oh, yeah." Joey closed his eyes, wrapped his arms tight around JC, and smiled, secretly, in the dark.

  
   


* * *

  
   


In a way, Justin was the worst. JC knew Justin way before Chris did, so it was really unfair that Justin wasn't taking JC's side. They were mice together, they had a _sacred bond_, and what did Justin do? He stole JC's sandwich and scampered off to play Halo with Chris. Halo for _days_. The Halo bond seemed a lot stronger than the mouse bond, which really sucked, because JC always got sort of motion sick when he tried to forge a Halo bond with people. He could take about fifteen minutes, and then he had to go lie down.

JC missed Lance, and he even kind of missed Chris even though Chris was obviously deranged or evil or both. But he missed Justin most of all, because Justin, well. They had a _bond_. But when he tried to talk to Justin about it, he got nowhere.

"Justin," he said, after sneaking onto the three-man bus when nobody seemed to be looking, "I just want to say that I'm sorry, and I'll do better." He wasn't really sure what he was sorry for or what he was supposed to do better at, but when approaching the Angry Timberlake, it was always best to start with an apology. "I know I hurt Chris, and you know I love him like a brother, and so you also gotta know I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get straight with him. If you had my back in the meantime...well, it would mean a lot."

Justin fired his plasma rifle forty times into an alien that kept turning invisible. He never took his eyes off the screen. "You apologize to him yet?"

"Well, um." JC cleared his throat. "Not yet. I just--"

"Then fuck off," Justin said, jamming the fire button viciously.

In a storm of blue plasma, the alien guy went down.

  
   


* * *

  
   


Lying beside Joey in Lance's narrow bunk, JC shook his head in bewilderment. "They all hate me," he said, possibly for the five billionth time. "I just don't get it."

"I know, babe," Joey said. He traced gentle, warm fingers over JC's throat. JC's breath caught, and Joey did it again.

"I don't know what happened to us. We could have been so happy together!"

Joey's fingers stilled. "What?"

"We could have made it work. We could have tried harder!"

"JC...you and Chris. You were never like, actually, together."

"I know," JC said, red-eyed, holding Joey tight. "But we _could_ have been!"

Joey frowned. Then he lifted his hand again, and deliberately stroked the pad of his forefinger over JC's lower lip.

JC's eyes glazed over. "Maybe," JC said, feeling a little light-headed, "maybe I should...talk...to Lance..."

"Maybe," Joey said sweetly into the wet heat of JC's mouth, "you should stay right here."

  
   


* * *

  
   


For the next two days, JC didn't really give a fuck about Chris.

  
   


* * *

  
   


But on the third day, he did go talk to Lance. Unsteadily, on feet that didn't really touch the ground, and with knees that seemed inclined to wobble...but he went.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"Lance!" he shouted, banging on the door to the three-man bus. He knew Chris was doing an interview and he'd waited until he saw Justin leave, so he figured he could corner Lance alone. "Lance, I know you're in there! Open up!"

From inside he heard cussing, the sound of something heavy falling over, more cussing, and several unfortunate-sounding thuds. "LANCE!"

_"Fucking fuck!"_ he heard from behind the door, and then another thud, and then, _"Keep your fucking pants on, for the love of_ \-- Oh, JC, it's you."

JC blinked. "You're not Lance."

"No," Chris said, rolling his eyes. "I'm Chris. Chris Kirkpatrick. You may have heard of me, I'm in a band."

"You're not at your interview."

Chris looked down at himself. "Not that this wouldn't make a great cover shot," he said, "but no."

JC blinked again, and frowned. "You're not _dressed_."

Chris hiked the black satin sheet he had wrapped around his waist a little higher, which was a relief, as his first interpretation of "waist" had shown off more than a Paris Hilton home movie. "No shit. Really?"

"Where's Lance?"

"Lance is in my bunk," Chris said, slowly, "where I was making, sweet, sweet love to him until you knocked down our fucking _door_! Jesus, can't a couple of gay popstars get a little privacy in their own fucking bus?"

JC stared. "You don't seem very heartbroken."

Chris blinked. "Oh." He winced a little, and took a step back. "Well, I, um. Yeah, C... about that..."

That was all Chris said.

Because that was when JC hit him.

  
   


* * *

  
   


Later, jumbled between Justin and Joey around the "kitchen" table of the two-man bus, JC held a bag of ice against his knuckles and glared at his hand.

"JC hit somebody," Justin breathed. "Whoa."

"JC," Joey said, in a voice filled with awe, "hit _Chris_."

JC glared at Joey and said nothing.

"It's okay, C," Justin said soothingly. "You must have been, like, drugged or something. You must have been drunk. You'd never hit anybody who didn't really deserve it."

"Chris," JC hissed through gritted teeth, "really, _really_ deserved it."

"And we believe you!" Justin said quickly. "Right, Joey?"

"Right!"

"I've never hit anybody before," JC said to his fist.

Justin glanced at Joey over the top of JC's head. Joey shrugged helplessly, brown eyes wide with worry. JC hunched down into his seat and pretended to see none of it.

"We can get you counseling," Justin said. Justin was always very much in favor of counseling.

"We can get you some more ice," Joey said. Joey was always very much in favor of minimal bruising.

"I don't need anything," JC said to both of them. He met both sets of concerned eyes grimly. "Let me off this bus. I'm quitting the band."

JC was always very much in favor of _drama_.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"He's bluffing," Chris said confidently, as they all stood by JC's bunk and watched him pack. When JC started pulling Hard Rock menus out from under his mattress, Chris's eye -- the one not turning a nice, shiny purple -- went wide. "I'm pretty sure he's bluffing?"

"I'm not bluffing." JC shot them all a venomous look and stuffed another pack of underwear into his duffle bag. "I can't take this anymore. Nobody but Joey talks to me. Nobody but Joey believes me. Y'all want to hate me, fine, but you're gonna have to hate the back of me, because I am _out_ of here."

Lance, whose hand had been practically glued into Chris's back pocket, looked long and hard at JC.

Then he pulled back a little and looked even harder at Chris. "Chris...what did you do?"

JC stood up and leveled a finger at Lance. "You," he said, "You shut up. You took advantage of Chris when he was helpless and sad and alone and vulnerable."

"Wow," Chris said. He put a hand solidly on his own ass to trap Lance's hand where it was, while Lance, pale and shocked, struggled to get away. "That is a really comprehensive list of things I have never been. Justin, tell him how wrong he is."

"Sorry." Justin shrugged. He stood easily at JC's side, shoulders low, hand in his pockets. "No can do. The mouse bond is back, yo."

JC spared a wan smile for Justin, which made Chris roll his eyes so far back in his head he looked like an extra from a zombie movie.

"You just don't want me to see your pain." JC went to Chris and put both hands on his face. He stared deeply into Chris's eyes. "I understand. I've hurt you too much. That's why I'm leaving." His voice caught on a sob, deep in his chest. "I've done enough damage."

Chris's good eye narrowed.

"I'm sorry," JC said softly. His lashes fluttered down to lay gracefully above his pale, tear-streaked cheeks. "For everything. But most of all, Chris," and he opened his eyes again, stepping very very close, "most of all, I'm sorry I couldn't let you in far enough to heal my wayward heart."

Chris's eye narrowed a little bit more -- and then bugged out. He tried to take a step back but Lance was there with a hand on his ass, propelling him forward. He tried to take a step to the side, but Joey and Justin had him pinned. In the end, he could only stand there, frozen like a small woodland creature, as JC's mouth zoomed down closer

"Hey!"

and closer

"Now, wait just a damn minute, JC--"

...and finally latched onto his.

  
   


* * *

  
   


"Mprhmph!"

JC worked out. Few people knew it, but he did. He wasn't a gym rat like some guys, but he trained, and his arms were very, very strong. Chris

"Mrph! Let me go, you fucking baboon -- mph!"

did not work out.

"Unghyeargh!"

Not even a little bit, JC reflected smugly, withdrawing his tongue from Chris's mouth. Chris's mouth had tasted like beer and cheetos and something else that JC was slightly worried was Lance, but it was worth it.

"That was your fucking _tongue_, JC! Gross!"

JC set Chris down and watched him, one eyebrow raised. Chris wiped at his mouth frantically and scrabbled for a water bottle.

"Funny," JC said evenly. "That's not what you said the night you stuck a knife in the back of our doomed and tragic love."

Chris's eyes cut to Lance. Lance stared back at Chris, eyes as hard and green as agates. After a few seconds, Chris's shoulders slumped and he looked away.

Joey moved closer to JC and took his hand. "JC Chasez," he said reverently, "will you marry me?"

Slowly -- alarmingly -- Justin started to grin. "Your _wayward heart_?"

JC grinned back, showing just as many teeth. He shrugged modestly. "I'm a writer."

  
   


* * *

  
   


"So," Joey said one day, out of nowhere. The sand beneath their bare feet was white and warm, the breeze was cool and salty, and the ocean faded from green out to cobalt blue. Overhead, the sun beat down on them, slowly turning their cheeks bright red. If they ever ditched the other guys and struck out on their own, it was just the kind of cover JC would want for their first album.

"So," JC said. Side by side they'd walked about a mile, rolling up their jeans and kicking their feet in the surf. Their hands swung close together, but never actually touched. "Pretty day, huh?"

Joey looked right at JC and said, "Oh, yeah."

JC nudged at Joey's shoulder and grinned. "Shut up, man. I'll go all pink."

The other thing, the _best_ thing JC had noticed about Joey was, JC was kind of falling for him.

It crept up on him kind of slow, preoccupied as he was with making sure Lance didn't hate Chris forever and making sure Chris paid Justin and Joey what he owed them for fucking with JC's head by proxy just to get Lance in the sack. And he had to kind of edge around the way Joey had sort of manipulated JC into the sack, rather than just coming right out and asking for it (like JC would have turned down _Joey_, dude. what_ev_er.) But when all bribes were in the hands of their rightful owners, and when Lance and Chris were again cheerfully and loudly doing whatever they did now on the three-man bus, JC took advantage of the relative (and probably temporary) peace by deciding he thought it was all kind of sweetly romantic.

"So, you know, I was thinking," Joey said, smiling his goofy triangle smile. "If I slept in your bunk, we could throw all our crap on my bunk, and save a ton of storage space."

JC stared up into the sky. Bright white birds where wheeling overhead, crying out to each other over and over. Between the birds and the wind and the ocean, the day sounded a little bit like that _Sounds of Nature_ CD Justin had given him once for his birthday, the cheap bastard.

"What I was thinking," JC said slowly, "was, we could throw all our crap on my bunk, which smells like ferrets, and sleep in yours."

Smiling, Joey reached out and twined his fingers through JC's. "Smart and sexy," Joey said. "I think I'm in love."

_Me, too_, JC thought while Joey leaned in and kissed him, tasting like sky, salt, and sunshine.


End file.
